


Resale Value

by Arazsya



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Beholding, Blackmail, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Soul Selling, Workplace Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-05 23:48:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15874209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arazsya/pseuds/Arazsya
Summary: Martin Blackwood sells his soul at the age of seventeen, to a man in a hospital car park.





	Resale Value

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Noceu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noceu/gifts).



> Wasn't sure how to word it for tags, but here's a warning for the villain being a total creep. OC, because the TMA monsters have class. Hope you like it!

Martin Blackwood sells his soul at the age of seventeen, to a man in a hospital car park. The man is smartly dressed, and smiles at Martin despite his sniffles and his tatty jumper, as much dog hair and disintegrated tissue as it is wool. He hands Martin a heavy embossed card, pats his shoulder, tells him it’ll be all right. Tells him he’ll help his mother.

The man lies.

-

Martin doesn’t remember much about it, afterwards. It was raining. He had sat in a waiting room that was more of a corridor, bare brick and shrinking boards, and watched the rivulets chasing each other down the cracked window, blurring together and rendering the outside world a mess of indistinct greys and whites and greens. His coat had dripped onto the floor, but he hadn’t wanted to take it off, lose that layer of protection.

He might have been crying. He had cried a lot, in those days.

He doesn’t remember the face of the man who had called him through, or the office beyond that ill-fitting door. He remembers signing the paperwork, his hands shaking so badly that he could hardly hold the pen. Remembers that it had _hurt_ , remembers the man’s smile, lit by the bright white glow of his soul, when he had asked if there was anything else Martin was interested in selling, remembers stumbling on his way home, the burn in his throat as he’d retched into a bush.

He remembers never telling his mother.

-

Martin watches her for months for a sign of improvement. There is nothing, but when he phones the man to ask why, he laughs down the line, and says that he can’t work miracles. There’s silence for a long minute, and then Martin asks if he can have his soul back. The man assures him that if he checks his copy of the paperwork, he’ll find that it’s no longer his property.

-

Martin learns later that his school had done a soul-selling awareness day, detailing the dangers of black market buyers and unsafe sales. It had had roleplaying scenarios and sandwiches and a long presentation on the overhead projector.

He had phoned in sick that entire week, trying to take care of his mother.

He laughs until he cries.

-

Martin drops out of school, looks after his mother, and waits to become unsouled, which is what the leaflets in the chemist tell him usually happens to those who sell their souls without the proper precautions. The man will eat his soul to stay young, or drain it completely to power something, or just sell it on to someone who will. He’ll be different, then, the leaflets say. Without emotion. Maybe then, he thinks, he won’t care that his mum doesn’t get any better.

-

The first time it happens, he’s in an interview. It’s at the job centre, barely private, just a table, partitioned off from all the others with a half-wall. If he’s quiet, he can hear all the other candidates, answering their own questions with far more fluency than he can manage, his skin buzzing with an anxiety that’s lodged in his throat, too, making his voice quaver.

His interviewer asks him something. He thinks _I can do this, I prepared for this_ , tries to encourage the answers he’s sure he has, somewhere, to come flowing out of his mouth. Someone punches him, just below his sternum, hard enough to knock all of the air out, and he slumps forward, waiting for it to pass. It doesn’t. It just sharpens and sharpens, like someone’s trying to tear his organs out through his ribs. His thoughts burn out of his head, and he would wish he could go with them, if he had the capacity, but he doesn’t, and he’s trapped there.

When it finally passes, he’s curled on the job centre’s ratty carpet, with his interviewer and a few of the other staff standing over him, aching like he’s been running for hours.

He doesn’t get the job.

-

Elias Bouchard’s office has no electric lighting. Instead, the walls are lined with shelving, which holds rows and rows of identical jars, each one with a name card in front of it. The souls in them glow brightly enough to turn the darkness of the room into daylight. Martin watches them shine through their patterns, drifting in their glass, and just feels the empty space inside himself a little more deeply. He shrinks into his chair, trying to shade himself from them.

“Before we can formalise your appointment,” Elias says, placing an empty jar on the desk. It’s a well-made thing, its stopper glass too, like some sort of decanter for a whiskey worth more than Martin had ever earned. “I’m afraid I’m going to need to remove your soul.”

Martin stares at the jar, at the glimmering reflections dancing through its surface, echoing all the souls on the shelves. At the cavernous space inside it, where his is supposed to go. Elias watches him back, and he feels ill with it.

“I assure you,” Elias says. “The procedure will be quite painless.”

Martin opens his mouth, then closes it again. He can’t remember if there was a box for this on the application form, if he had just forgotten to fill it in, if he was already supposed to have told someone about this, if he had wasted all their time. If he’s going to lose another chance at helping his mother, have to start the search all over again.

“It’s nothing nefarious,” Elias says, considers Martin over the desk. “Mostly tradition, really. A safeguard, left over from more superstitious times. You couldn’t sell your soul to a demon if it was here, after all, and though we’ve moved past that now, you do have my word that it will be safer here than it would be with you.”

“I can’t,” Martin manages, finally, the words bursting from his throat like a cough. “I can’t, I already sold it.”

“Oh,” Elias says. He reaches back down into his desk, and Martin swallows, lets his head slump forwards, sure that he’s done.

“I,” he says. Stops.

“Of course, your circumstances and reasons are your own,” Elias says, straightening up again. “You don’t have to tell me anything, but, if I may?” He holds out something which looks like a handheld mirror, with an ornate handle and frame, but the glass is swirled through with green and amber. It reflects nothing. “This is a soulscope. It will allow me to… check.” He moves it so that Martin can see the jars through it. The souls show through it like a blot of ink, drain as much light as they give off.

Martin nods, and Elias holds it up between them. There’s a long moment, the question of whether he can still have the job trying to push off Martin’s tongue, held back by the insistent sting of how rude it feels.

“It’s as I thought,” Elias says, finally. “It seems your soul was… inexpertly removed. There are still some traces, which I can remove. They should stop causing you any discomfort, and as much as I don’t _need_ any part of your soul here, it _is_ tradition.”

Martin stammers out an agreement, hardly able to talk around the smile he’s trying to keep off his face. It’s all as painless as Elias had promised. The remnants of his soul sit in their own jar on Elias’ shelf, with their own name card, and he tells himself that they glow just as brightly as any of the others.

-

He feels like he belongs, at the Institute. Like he isn’t missing something, because everyone else is missing the same thing; Jon’s soul, Tim’s soul, Sasha’s soul, are all on the shelf next to his, and no one but Elias knows his is any different.

* * *

Tim Stoker isn’t quite sure how he ended up where he is. He remembers all the steps, of course he does, he’s going to be dreaming them every night for as many as he has left - finally trudging out of those damn corridors, finding the body in the Archives, all of it. He’d taken Martin home, because he hadn’t liked that dazed look in his eyes, because he didn’t trust Jon not to be the murderer and have turned up at Martin’s flat seeking shelter, because he hadn’t wanted to be alone.

Because he hadn’t been ready to be without Martin again.

The kissing maybe hadn’t been the best idea. It hadn’t seemed like a bad one, at the time, and they had been two similarly traumatised consenting adults, but Tim wakes too early. He has to gently extract himself from Martin’s grip, and then there’s nothing to do but lie there, watching Martin sleep, the stress lines on his face finally smooth, and wonder what it’s going to mean.

There’s no reason, he thinks, for it to mean anything beyond _I’m glad we’re alive_ , or _we wanted to_ , but Martin seems like the sort of person who’ll want it to mean more. Chocolates and flowers and not just a few gasping thrusts in the dark when they’d been through too much together not to. _Poetry_.

Tim doesn’t know what he wants, if the knot he can feel between his lungs is regret or reluctance at the thought of letting go of this or just tears that need to be let out.

He slides out of the bed, years of practice letting him do it so that the sheets barely whisper against his skin. He could leave now, he thinks, picking his shirt off Martin’s floor at the sudden chill. Leave Martin to wake up on his own, a note on his pillow if he’s lucky. His throat aches.

Martin’s kitchen has the sort of cleanliness only obtained through disuse, so when Tim finally finds himself a glass, he rinses it out under the tap first, trying to wash the dust out. The pipes hiss, settle for a minute, and finally let the flat subside back into an uncomfortable silence.

Tim takes a sip, pulls a face at the taste. He makes a mental note to buy Martin a filter jug, if he does decide that he’s going to be spending more time there, because the London water is a cruel and unusual punishment he’s sure he’s undeserving of, given how well the sex had gone.

There’s a strangled cry from the bedroom, and Tim nearly drops his glass. Imagines the cinematic cliche of a close-up on it as it hits the floor, slow motion glass shards skittering outwards, a focus on the pool of water as his feet rush through the background, towards the source of the noise.

It doesn’t fall. He sets it down carefully on the side, and moves slowly back towards the bedroom, pushes the door in with a caution that he hates himself for.

There’s no one else in the room. No fuckhanded monster standing over Martin, no doors that shouldn’t be there, no worms, no wild-eyed Jon brandishing a pipe. Just Martin, his back arched and his fingers claws in the blanket. All the lines, more of them, are back on his face, and as Tim watches him, the aching whine in his throat rises into another cry.

 _Nightmare_ , Tim thinks, as Martin’s limbs twitch like a dog dreaming of the chase. He’s earned a few nightmares. They both have. But he doesn’t like the angles that Martin’s body has taken on, and when he jerks, a full-body shudder contorting into something more, he goes far too close to concussing himself against the headboard.

“Martin?” he says, firm but gentle. He leans in, wary to get too close, in case he lashes out, believes Tim to be something else. As he does so, he realises that Martin’s eyes are already open, twin slits. He swears, makes a grab for his face that he aborts at the realisation that whatever it is, it could be communicable. “Martin!”

“I’m fine,” Martin manages, though the words are barely audible, bitten off by another twitch.

“You don’t _look_ fine,” Tim snaps, his hands hovering uselessly an inch away from Martin’s skin. “What’s happening?”

“It’ll pass,” Martin insists, squeezing his eyes closed again. “He’ll stop in a minute, could you just-” He cries out again, grits his teeth in a failing attempt to muffle it.

Tim touches him, and the second that he does so and his skin doesn’t catch light, he’s doing more, climbing back onto the bed, pulling Martin against his chest, awkwardly corralling his stiff limbs. Martin twists further into the embrace, buries his face in Tim’s shirt, muffling his sobs against the fabric.

It’s fifteen long minutes before it stops. All the tension drains out of Martin’s body, and he flops bonelessly against Tim, breathing shakily. Tim’s feels just as bad, a harsh scraping in his throat that it takes him far too long to steady.

“What the fuck was that?” he demands, finally, but he still sounds like he’s just gone through twelve hours of chess-boxing.

“I’m sorry,” Martin whispers. “If I had known it was going to happen, I would have - but he doesn’t _usually_ tonight, I don’t know-”

“That’s not answering my question,” Tim growls. “You had some sort of attack. Martin, I thought it was - I thought you were - what happened?”

“It’s nothing, really,” Martin says, sounds as small as he does when Jon shouts at him. Tim hates the comparison the second that it occurs to him. “I’m sorry I worried you, but-”

“ _Martin_ ,” Tim says. Doesn’t shout, knows he doesn’t need to.

“I sold my soul!” The words come tumbling out of Martin like shopping from a burst bag, and there’s a sob in them that it takes Tim a long moment of quiet to think around.

“No, you didn’t,” Tim says. “I’ve seen your soul. It’s in one of Elias’ goddamn jars, next to - next to Jon’s. Shiny and everything.”

“That’s only part of it,” Martin says, presses his face against Tim so he won’t have to meet his eyes. “Elias said the - the man I sold it to didn’t take it out properly, so he has what was left.”

“I’m not sure that explains the-”

“I think he holds it,” Martin says, his fingers fussing at the hem of Tim’s shirt. “The man I sold it to, or whoever he sold it to. Not very often, but it’s been happening ever since I sold it, and the leaflets all said the symptoms matched, so.” He smiles at Tim, a wan, unmeant thing. “Guess I should just be grateful he doesn’t unsoul me.”

“Who the hell did you sell it to?” Tim demands. “I thought there were regulations-”

“It wasn’t a safe sale,” Martin tells him, and he’s gone again, clearly doesn’t want to talk about it. Tough. “I was seventeen, I didn’t know any better.”

“Let me get this straight,” Tim says. He can’t keep his voice level. Tries. Fails. “Ever since you were seventeen, you’ve been having someone, who might decide to unsoul you at any time, just, play with your soul on the regular?”

“It’s not _that_ regular,” Martin mutters.

“Fuck, Martin,” Tim says, and it feels like that, all of the information, needs a while to settle.

Martin shifts against him, trying to make himself more comfortable. His fingers smooth at Tim’s shirt, trying to fix where he had creased it, and Tim catches his hand, tries not to drop it immediately when he finds the skin cold.

“Could the authorities not, you know, do something?” he asks.

“I signed the paperwork,” Martin says, sighs. “There was nothing anyone could do. Tim, it’s not that bad, really-”

“How much does it hurt?” Tim says. “I mean, it’s someone putting their hands on that raw spark of whatever-it-is that makes you who you are. Other than that, and the existential horror of becoming some kind of automaton-” _Danny, Danny_ “-just the pain of it. On a scale of one to ten.”

Martin hesitates, and that tells Tim everything that he needs to know.

“It’s _bad_ ,” Tim states.

“I’m sorry,” Martin says. “It’s not - I didn’t want you to have to see that, I should have warned you, I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologising,” Tim says. “It’s not your fault.” He gets the sense that Martin doesn’t agree, from the soft sigh at his words, the downcast gaze, but he doesn’t verbalise it, so Tim can’t argue it with him. “So you just live like that?”

“I suppose,” Martin says. “You make it sound really…”

“I don’t think I _make it sound_ anything,” Tim says. “Has that ever happened to you at work?”

“First time was at an interview,” Martin says. “Only once, at the Institute, but it was before the Archives, and it didn’t last very long. It’s usually only at night, I think he must have a day job or something.”

 _Or it means is that the best time to look at a soul is when it’s dark_ , Tim thinks, but he’ll leave comparisons with the stars and light pollution to Martin and his poetry.

“It’s nothing,” Martin says again, but Tim knows that it doesn’t matter how many times he repeats it. It hadn’t looked like nothing, hadn’t felt like nothing. Still doesn’t. He finds himself holding Martin like he’s made of glass, waiting for him to shatter again at any moment, knows Martin has noticed, can feel the misery in him. He says nothing, just drifts off to sleep again, where Tim can’t follow. He lies awake, listening to Martin’s breathing, thinking on worms and corridors and murder, on surviving all of that, and not being able to fix something as simple as an unsafe soul sale.

-

Tim sleeps late. Doesn’t intend to, but his phone’s too dead for him to have set an alarm, and the light doesn’t spill into the room and wake him as it would at home; Martin has to, at around eleven, with the news that he’d made breakfast, and that Elias had said to take the day. Tim would have taken it anyway, and he can’t quite quash the vague resentment at not being able to.

He watches Martin over his scrambled eggs for any sign of frailty, but there’s nothing. Martin’s just the same as ever, but he must feel Tim’s scrutiny, or else the vision of the corpse is still playing over his eyes, because he just stares down into his mug.

“I’m really sorry about last night,” he says, eventually, hands pressed against the ceramic, even though it must be cold by now. “I should have told you before, and-”

“Martin, it’s fine,” Tim says, even though it isn’t. He supposes that it’s not Martin’s not telling him he has a problem with, so it’s not really a lie. Not that there’s much point in reassuring himself of that, when he’s taking advantage of Martin’s guilt a moment later. “But if it’s OK, I’d like to take a look at that paperwork you were talking about.”

Martin draws in a breath. Hesitates. Doesn’t look up from the still surface of his tea.

“I dated a lawyer once,” Tim says, even though it’s not strictly true, not as far as he knows.

Martin should smile at that, the beginnings of a blush collecting in his cheeks. Doesn’t.

“It would help me,” Tim says, and swallows any disquiet at the manipulation with another forkful of eggs. “Just, to see if there’s anything I can do.”

“Fine,” Martin says, his hands finally moving away from the mug. “I’ll - I’ll get it for you.”

-

There’s less to it than Tim had thought there would be. There’s still a part of his mind that thinks that soul contracts should be great rolls of parchment, unfurling halfway across the floor, covered in strange sigils, the signature at the bottom writ in blood, unearthed from some vault or other.

Martin keeps his in a mildewy brown paper envelope, in a box at the back of the cupboard. It’s three sides of A4, with what Tim recognises as an earlier version of Martin’s signature scribbled in fading biro at the bottom of the last page.

“See?” Martin says, hovering in the doorway like he doesn’t want to be there but can’t quite bear to leave Tim alone with it. “There’s nothing-”

“You could let me read it first, Martin,” Tim says, leans back in his chair and smiles to take the sting out of the interruption, to hide the way he wants to pore over the contract, rip it up.

“Right,” Martin says. “Yes. Fine. I’ll - I’ll go and be somewhere else?”

“I’ll let you know when I’ve finished,” Tim tells him, and he’s leaning over the document before Martin’s quite finished lingering in the doorway.

It’s difficult to understand, wrapped up in terms that Tim finds difficult to understand now. He can’t imagine how little sense it would have made to an upset seventeen year old Martin. There’s a nasty little fine-print clause that seems to be stating that the purchaser, Henry Stapleton, is not liable for any failure to engender a full recovery, and goes on with some waffle that Tim thinks means that Martin had essentially given his soul away for free. Martin’s right. It doesn’t look like there’s anything that anyone can do, legally.

It’s not the contract itself that Tim’s interested in, though. It’s the name signed alongside Martin’s, all loops and flourishes, carefully printed underneath, and the address that lies pale grey in the footer. He snaps pictures of both, and then folds the papers carefully back into their envelope, wincing at the smell.

He leaves it on Martin’s table, somehow resisting the urge to tear it to pieces, make it into nothing but streams of confetti across Martin’s kitchen, a preemptive celebration.

-

It doesn’t look like the office of an evil soul-stealing dickbag, Tim doesn’t think. When he had done his soul-selling awareness courses, they had talked about the backstreet buyers like they lived in opulence, great high apartments with glass walls. In the old movies, they were shady people in trench coats in allies. In some of the new fancy dramas, they were scientists, experimenting in a search for clean energy. This is a dingy flat that’ll have a dingy office and an even dingier living space beyond it, nothing like the sort of wealth that he would expect.

He knocks at the door and waits, tries to bring to the fore his best, most charming smile, but it feels sick around the edges.

The man who answers isn’t as old as he should be, considering how many years it had been since Martin had sold his soul. Tim would have put him at about mid thirties, but he dresses like he’s older, and besides, he doubts that Martin would have sold his soul to someone who looked barely out of uni. Which means that he’s been eating his purchases, to stay young. Not Martin’s, though, so he had probably sold it on.

“Stapleton?” Tim asks, forces his voice to be light, hates having to blow the dust off that old cheerful part of himself for _this_.

“You have an appointment?” the man asks, watching Tim with a suspicion that brings lines to the surface of his skin, and his assumable age crosses the line into the forties.

“Didn’t know I needed one,” Tim says. “Are you Stapleton?”

“You selling something?” he demands, and Tim decides that he’s going to go ahead and assume that this is, in fact, Stapleton. There’s no other reason for him to deny it so much. “I don’t buy anything at the door.”

_No, you buy from vulnerable teenagers _, Tim thinks, but forces his smile to stay pleasant, because he’s never going to get anywhere if he lets on how much he wants to remove Stapleton’s spine.__

____

“No,” Tim says. “Not selling anything, just wanted to have a chat, if that’s all right?”

“What about?” Stapleton straightens his back so that he can look down at Tim, trying to make use of those extra few millimetres of height.

“You… _bought_ one of my friends’ soul,” Tim says, swallows a wince at the awkward terminology, but he can’t let Stapleton know how much Martin means to him, how much Tim values his soul, in case it drives up the cost or whatever information he has. “I was hoping to talk about that. So I’d like to come in. Or we can talk about it here, I suppose, where all your neighbours could hear us. Or you could shut me out, but then I would have to shout for you to hear me.”

“You had better come in, then,” Stapleton says. He stands aside, but Tim can see his hand sliding into his pocket, clutching at his phone, as though he’s making sure he can call the police if he needs to.

Tim nods and moves past him into a long corridor, lined with chairs on one side, facing the window opposite it. He can picture it, a far younger Martin, in one of those chairs, waiting for the door at the end, perhaps slightly less damaged then, no gaping hole as though someone locked out had decided to punch their way in. He wants to smash the glass, kick the door through, destroy all of it. He forces himself to stay still, remembers the weight of Martin in his arms. The sound of his breathing, so he can match his to it. That’s why he’s doing this, why he has to do it the way he is.

“We had better talk in my office,” Stapleton says, closing the front door with a click of locks, and moving past Tim into the corridor. “What did you say your friend’s name was?”

“Martin,” Tim says, even though the admission burns in his throat. He would have had to say it at some point, he tells himself, but it doesn’t feel any better. “Martin Blackwood. It was years ago, though, I don’t expect you-”

“I remember him,” Stapleton says, stops dead, a twitch of excitement in his face that sets Tim’s gut squirming.

“Right,” Tim says, the word half-chewed. “Good. I was hoping to find out what happened to it, so if you could-”

“You want to see it?” Stapleton asks, turning towards the other door, halfway down the corridor, the edge of it lined with even more locks. He drags a handful of keys from his pocket, and starts at the top. There’s a sort of fevered eagerness to his movements, and Tim can feel his smile starting to slip.

“See it?” he echoes. “You still have it?” After twelve years, he should have eaten it by now, eaten it or sold it on, the only souls that stay in one place that long are the ones the government had funneled billions of pounds into buying so that they could have clean street lights.

“You’ll understand in a minute,” Stapleton says, as he wrenches the key in the last lock around. He pushes the door open, and gestures to Tim to follow him through. The living room beyond is exactly as dingy as Tim had assumed it would be, the walls starting to moulder at the tops, the curtains threadbare, the clock stopped at a three-twenty with enough dust on it that it could have been like that for years. The light bulb, hanging bare from the ceiling, is clearly on its way out, barely an amber glow to the filament, but it’s not important. The room is lit by the souls on the shelves, like Elias’ office. Tim squints at them as though he could work out which one is Martin’s from sight alone, wonders if he should just _know_ when he sees it, like in all those trashy romantic novels he’d read.

Stapleton goes right past all of them, their undulations casting his shadow into strange shapes on the opposite wall. He stops outside another door, glances back at Tim as he fusses with the handle.

“Is he still…” Stapleton asks, lets himself trail of. His eyes go a little unfocussed, mouth quirking.

“Still _what_?” Tim demands, and curses himself for the speed and sharpness of it. He’s supposed to be seeming casual if not outright disinterested.

“Sweet?” Stapleton finishes, finally.

Tim wants to rip the smirk right off his face, and the more skin that comes with it, the better. He breathes, tries not to imagine this man watching, assessing Martin, and deciding to screw him over anyway. He’d been wrong to assume that it hadn’t been a monster, before.

Stapleton’s waiting for an answer, standing with the door handle turned.

“Yeah,” Tim says. It feels like a betrayal, _is_ a betrayal. He’s supposed to be holding what Martin is safe. “He is.”

Stapleton opens the door, and Tim trudges after him into what his stomach turns to see is a bedroom. There’s no light there, failing or otherwise, no need for it. Instead, there’s a single soul, floating in what looks like an old coffee jar on the bedside table, spinning gentle light across the room. Tim can feel the glow on his face, wants to close his eyes and lean into it, but he can’t move. He just gazes at the jar, mesmerised.

“It’s beautiful,” he murmurs, and he does _know_. Knows it’s Martin’s. Of course it’s Martin’s, if anyone is going to have a literally beautiful soul, it’s going to be Martin. But Tim has never seen anything like it before, can’t drag his attention away from it. When he blinks, he’s enraptured even by its afterimage on his lids. He’s been in Elias’ office, been outside in the soul-lit streets, watched endless awareness videos, he’s seen more souls than he can count, but none of them have been like this. _Bright_ either doesn’t cover it, or he’ll need to stop applying it to anything else. He thinks he can see faint colour in it too, at its meandering edges. And just like that, all his attempt to distance himself are worth nothing. He can’t take his eyes off it.

“Isn’t it?” Stapleton says, and Tim is vaguely aware of his silhouette, already halfway across the room, blotting out some of the light. Tim startles, the spell broken, just in time to see Stapleton lift the jar. The soul inside seems to shrink away from the contact, pressing against the opposite glass.

“What are you doing?” Tim demands, his voice hoarse. He stumbles forward, but he knows he’s not going to get there in time to stop it. “I can see it just fine where it is, don’t-”

Stapleton pulls the top from the jar, and in one smooth, practiced movement, he catches Martin’s soul in his fist and pulls it out.

“Put it back,” Tim whispers, the words cracking.

Stapleton smiles at him, his features lit by the soul, tendrils of light writhing over his silhouetted fingers. This, Tim thinks, this is what’s hurting Martin, and he does it like it’s nothing, touches the raw soul like he would a pet he doesn’t know how to handle.

“Do you want to hold it?” Stapleton asks, and when he holds the soul out, it moves towards him, drifting light towards him as though it’s been caught by a light breeze, as though it’s asking for his help. Martin, Tim thinks. Martin’s at the Institute. He _hopes_ he’s at the Institute, and not on some coffee break or something, but then he remembers that Jon is gone, that Sasha is gone, and he can’t help but picture Martin, curled on the floor of the Archives, crying out like he had that night, alone. Alone, or worse, with Elias, or a stranger, or that cop.

“Put it _back_ ,” Tim snarls, his hand digging itself into his pocket after his phone, so that he can call, talk Martin through it, until he realises that he can’t, not while Stapleton’s here.

“I think it _wants_ you to hold it,” Stapleton muses, gazes at it as though he’s as hypnotised as Tim was. “Look.”

Tim looks. Moves closer, the impulse to snatch it rising until he can feel it in his skin. He can’t, can’t bring himself to touch it, not when he knows what that does. It gets brighter, he thinks, and the colours are definitely there now, moving through it like oil in water.

“He must _love_ you,” Stapleton says, and when he finally looks up at Tim, there’s a calculation in his face, one that Tim wants to bolt away from. “Or do you love him?”

“ _Put it back_!” It doesn’t even sound like a human voice any longer, more like an animal, crying out in pain. Tim doesn’t care. He can feel every pretense at control that he had slipping away.

“A little of both, perhaps,” Stapleton concludes. He proffers the soul to Tim, laughs when Tim recoils, can’t risk touching it.

“You’re hurting him,” Tim growls, and he finds himself taking a step closer, trying to loom, to intimidate, make every one of those worm scars finally do something for him.

Stapleton blinks like he doesn’t understand the reasoning.

“Just stop touching it,” Tim says. “Please.”

Stapleton sighs, but he drops the soul back into the jar. Tim watches it, could swear that, instead of shrinking of towards Stapleton, it’s still trying to come towards him. He wants to rest his hand against the glass and see if it moves towards him, but Stapleton is still holding it.

“I never thought it could get any brighter,” Stapleton says, like it’s a comment on the weather. “Don’t suppose you’d be willing to stay?”

“No,” Tim says, forces himself past it. “In fact, I’d quite like to take it with me when I go. What do you want for it?”

“It’s not for sale,” Stapleton says. “I’ve had it for twelve years, and I’ve never considered it. Not once.” He offers Tim another smile. “But, out of interest, what would you give me for it?”

A distant penny drops with a thud so heavy that it reverberates through Tim’s head. He understands, abruptly, why Elias keeps their souls in his office.

“Is yours as nice, do you think?” Stapleton asks, turning appraising eyes on Tim.

“I don’t have it,” Tim says, but he’s already running through plans to retrieve it, if he can just get Elias out of his office for a minute, wedge some paper under the door so that it won’t quite close.

“Then you have nothing to offer me,” Stapleton says, his shrug shaking the soul in the jar. “As nice as it would have been to have the set.”

“I have money-”

“I have thirty-eight souls in my sitting room,” Stapleton says, looks almost amused by Tim’s attempt to bargain. “What could I possibly want with your money?”

He’s slipping. Losing to this soul-hoarder just like he had to the worms, to the corridors, to Jon and the thing that he refuses to believe was ever Sasha. The last purpose he’d been holding onto. Without it, without Martin, there’s nothing but the bleak empty that feels the same as accepting Danny’s death, of wandering through those corridors and understanding that that’s all there’ll be now.

Tim steps into Stapleton’s space without quite knowing what he plans to do there, if he’ll threaten or plead or keep on trying to bargain. Or maybe he does know, and he’s just trying to work out whether he had passed any security cameras on the way in, determine whether or not he’d be top suspect in the murder. But Stapleton is faster, has less far to go than Tim, and he’s holding the open jar up towards his mouth before Tim’s made up his mind.

“Don’t,” Tim says, his hands stilling where they’ve reached out. It’s like the bottom of his mind drops away, leaves him stumbling with a vertigo he knows he wouldn’t be able to escape in time.

“Don’t threaten me,” Stapleton says, the movements of his mouth reflected in the glass. “I will unsoul him, before I’ll let you hurt me. Everything of him that you love, everything of him that loves you, it will be gone.”

Tim steps back so far that he nearly falls, can hardly get his feet under him. Can’t get his mind under him, either, all his thoughts too busy wondering why he hadn’t been allowed to know that he’s in love with Martin until he was so close to losing him.

“I think you should leave,” Stapleton says, lowering the jar again, but it would still take far too little effort for him to knock it back, drain it like he would a good pint.

“I’m going,” Tim says, backs away, his shoes finding warped places in the floorboards under the carpet. “Just, please. Don’t touch it anymore. It hurts him, you don’t know-”

“He was hurting when I met him,” Stapleton says, flatly. “Now, go.”

Tim can do nothing but obey.

-

By the time Tim gets back to the station, there’s an alert flashing on his phone. A text, from Martin. It’s too misspelled for Tim to make anything out of it but _help_. There’s no answer when he tries to call. He sends back a reply, promises that he’ll be there soon, only for engineering works to make a liar out of him.

-

Tim finds Martin, eventually. In the Archives, where he’d wanted and hadn’t wanted him to be. He’d jammed himself into the space under Jon’s desk, where the chair should tuck under, hidden except for the soft thumps whenever his head knocks into the panel behind it.

Tim drags the chair out of the way, crouches in its place, the movement far more controlled than it should be. Martin doesn’t react, probably hasn’t noticed him, though he’s clutching his phone so tightly that the case is warping, Tim’s text open on the screen. He twitches again, and Tim’s hand darts out, wraps around the back of his head to stop it from impacting the desk again. Martin starts, his eyes flying wide. He opens his mouth, and then it slams closed again with a clack of teeth, the muscles jumping in his jaw.

“Martin,” Tim says, and he can hear the despair, the guilt, in it. “Oh god, Martin.” He reaches out with his other hand, but it won’t cover the distance, doesn’t deserve to.

“It’ll stop,” Martin manages, a whistling hiss between his teeth. “It’ll _stop_ , why hasn’t it-” The words break apart, and Tim’s knuckles brush against the desk panel.

“I’m sorry,” Tim says, smooths his fingers down to the nape of Martin’s neck, hating the tension he can feel. “I’m so sorry.”

He doesn’t think Martin has heard him, not properly, but then something like focus swims back into his face.

“What?” Martin whispers. “Tim?”

“I-” Tim cuts himself off. Shouldn’t tell Martin now, not when he’s like this, he has enough to deal with. He’ll tell him later, once it’s stopped, and then Martin will have all his strength back to be angry at him with.

“What did you _do_?” Martin demands, sharp as Tim has ever heard him.

“I’m sorry,” Tim stumbles through the apology, wishes he could say it enough times to make Martin understand, to make it tangible. “I - I went to see him. Stapleton. I thought maybe I could find it, get it back for you, make _something_ right, I didn’t think he’d even still have it, I had no idea he’d be so-”

“ _Why would you go and see him_?” Martin snarls. Tim flinches back, nearly loses his balance. “Tim, he could have hurt you! He could have-” Martin cuts himself, bites down on his speech.

“I wanted him to stop hurting _you_ ,” Tim snaps. “And I’m sorry it didn’t work, I’m sorry I made it worse, I’m sorry I went behind your back, but I am _not_ sorry I tried. I’d try it again.”

Martin looks like he’s going to keep arguing, his eyes hot, but instead he just curls in on himself, doesn’t unfurl again, another of those aching sobs rattling in his throat where his anger should have been. Tim grabs at his shoulder, pulling him forwards so there’s room for him to squeeze himself under the desk too, cushioning Martin against him, the panel hard against his back. Martin folds into him, and Tim closes his eyes against the memory of that reaching soul.

“I’m still angry with you,” Martin tells him, muffled against Tim’s shirt.

“So am I,” Tim says, and it must be enough, even if it’s not about the same thing.

His legs are starting to go to sleep, by the time that Martin finally relaxes, Tim’s fingers stroking through his hair. Martin moves into his touch, letting out a long sigh.

“How long?” Tim asks him, quietly. He can’t raise his voice too high, doesn’t want to break the sudden peace.

“What time is it?” Martin mumbles.

Tim peers down at the arm still wrapped around Martin, squints at his watch.

“Coming up to four now,” he says.

“I’ve missed lunch, then,” Martin says, with a puff of air that Tim thinks is supposed to be a laugh. It’s a poor imitation.

“I’ll get you something,” Tim says, trying to remember what time the canteen closes. Dave’ll probably still have a few sandwiches left, he thinks, though they’re usually for the people from Artefact Storage. He must have a few extras, is used to people losing track of time.

“I’m not hungry,” Martin says, his fingers tightening in Tim’s clothes. “Just, don’t go? I - I just want you to be here.”

Tim sighs, does his best to tuck Martin more comfortably against him, as much as the space allows.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says. “But we can’t stay here forever. People will talk. You know how busy the Archives are.”

Martin’s smile looks almost genuine.

“Really, though, we should get you home,” Tim says.

“I’m all right now,” Martin says, pushes far enough away from Tim that he can see the doubtful frown on Tim’s face.

“Are you?” Tim asks.

“Ache a bit,” Martin says. “Muscles.”

“I’ll get you something for it later.”

“You don’t have to.” Martin’s head drops forward a little, talking more to Tim’s chest than his face.

“Martin.” Tim draws his name out, but he can’t force any exasperation into it. “It’s my fault, let me help. Besides, I’m sure I’ve got some Deep Heat in the cupboard needs using.” If there isn’t any, he’ll go out and buy some, but Martin doesn’t need to know that.

Martin exhales, and his forehead comes to rest against Tim’s sternum.

“I love you,” he mumbles, like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and then he goes still, must suddenly remember that they’ve not actually been together that long, that neither of them have said _that_ yet, that it makes them mean something far too soon. Tim can almost feel him trying to take it back, afraid that Tim just wants them to be casual, that it’s moving too fast, that now he’s broken something.

Tim gently tilts his face back up to kiss him, tries to soothe away the last traces of what had happened, convey what he’d realised when Stapleton had threatened to unsoul him. He hadn’t meant it to go any further than that, but Martin moves into it, shifts so that he’s straddling him, and then Tim’s lost in the sensations of lips and tongue and teeth, until his head smacks back into the desk.

“Oh god, Tim, I’m sorry,” Martin says, but Tim pulls him back, laughs against his mouth.

“Maybe we should go somewhere else?” Martin says, a little breathless, his hands running through Tim’s hair, checking for damage. “It’s a bit… cramped.”

Tim settles his hands over Martin’s hips, smiles at the look on his face. He traces a finger down one of Martin’s thighs, enjoys the resulting shiver, then pushes back up, teasing.

“Long way to the safe room,” he says. He plays with the hem of Martin’s jumper, lets his fingers brush against the skin beneath, likes the way it makes his breathing stutter. “Even longer way home.”

Martin pulls him into another kiss, leans forward and reaches down to undo Tim’s fly. Freezes, exhales a little too hard.

“Again?” Tim asks.

“No,” Martin offers him a smile, but it feels more like it’s so he has something to do with his face than like it’s actually meant. “Legs are just a bit stiff. He’ll be too bored of it for a while, I think.”

Tim hums, unconvinced, and Martin sighs.

“It’ll go back to normal,” he says. “Soon. I - I just want to be with you now?”

Tim lets himself be kissed again, tries not to notice that Martin is trying a little harder than normal. Then Martin’s lips move down again across his throat, and he decides to forget it all, just for a little while.

-

It doesn’t go back to normal. Stapleton only makes a schedule to break it. By the time that Jon comes back, leaves again, Tim’s calling Martin in sick at least one day every week. Eventually, he supposes that if Elias actually cares where Martin is, he’ll just _look_ , and stops phoning.

* * *

[CLICK]

“Martin Blackwood, Archival Assistant at the Magnus Institute, recording statement number 9970312, statement of Richard Marren, given-”

“Haven’t you already done one of those today?”

“Yes, but-”

“Jon never did more than one in a day.”

“I just-”

“I don’t think you should.”

[...]

“It helps, all right? When I’m reading the statements, it’s like I’m not - it doesn’t hurt.”

“Like you’re not yourself? For the low, low price of experiencing about twenty minutes of someone else’s life-changing terror, you get to escape your own body?”

“Tim…”

“Don’t look at me like that. I get it, I do, but when someone touches your soul it’s _supposed_ to hurt-”

“Tim!”

“Record over it, if you think posterity’s going to judge you.”

[...]

“Look, do it if you want, I just - I need you to get that it’s not - I worry about what this is doing - it’s not right for you to not feel it. I don’t want you to be in pain, you know that, but I don’t want you to hurt yourself trying to get away from it either.”

“I know.”

[...]

“Call me if you need me.”

[DOOR CLOSES]

[...]

“Martin Blackwood, Archival Assistant at the Magnus Institute, recording statement number 9970312…”

* * *

Tim walks into Jon’s office without knocking, points at the desk without looking at it, speaks without any pretense at being as fine as Martin’s always insisting they are.

“Turn that fucking thing off,” he says.

Jon looks up at him, squints and blinks like he doesn’t quite recognise him.

“Tape recorder,” Tim elaborates, does his best to stop his face from twitching into a snarl. “Off.”

“Tim,” Jon says, finally, anything even vaguely pleasant that there had been about his face sliding away. “Nice to see you. What did you want to talk about?”

“Martin,” Tim says, folds his arms and glares Jon down. He needn’t have bothered. Jon switches the recorder off so quickly that Tim can’t even get in the dig that’s sprung to his lips, where he says Martin’s full name and asks if Jon remembers him. Tim watches it a minute longer, waiting for it to switch itself back on, ignoring Jon’s impatient noises.

“I need your help,” he says, finally. Doesn’t take his eyes off the recorder, so misses what’s no doubt an utterly priceless expression on Jon’s face.

“You need my help?” Jon echoes, his inflection all over the place, in what Tim expects is supposed to be scepticism, but there’s a shade too much hope in there for it to work.

“I’m not saying it again.”

Jon nods, looks down at the papers on his desk. “You said it was about Martin?” he says, his voice turning unexpectedly gentle. Tim hasn’t heard it like that for a long time, if he ever has. “He’s all right? He said he was, but he looks so tired, and-”

“I need you to blackmail someone,” Tim cuts him off, has no desire to hear Martin’s condition described to him, not when he sees it the whole time he’s with him.

“Oh.” Jon deflates a little, like he’d thought Tim would actually have a use for the paranoid stalker, and not for the vaguely-terrifying-yet-still-kind-of-practical monster. “Wh-I’d like to know why? And who?”

“There’s this guy. He has Martin’s soul.”

“Elias?” Jon slumps even further. “I’m sorry, Tim, I haven’t been able to get him to-”

“No,” Tim says. “If you want the story, you’ll have to ask Martin. But, there’s a guy, he has Martin’s soul, and he’s hurting him. I want to make him give it back, but unless he does so freely, it’ll be theft on my end, and I’m sure he’d get the police involved to get it back. Don’t want to give our new murdercop the satisfaction. We need him to sign it over. You can make him admit to something.”

“Not if he hasn’t done anything,” Jon points out.

Tim snorts. “He’s been essentially stealing souls for years, of course he’s done _something_.”

“You want me to…” Jon hesitates, and Tim can’t quite tell if it’s apprehension or eagerness in his face. “Compel him?”

“You want me to forgive you, right?” Tim knows it’s a card he shouldn’t play, can’t guarantee that outcome, but he does it anyway.

“Martin knows about this?” Jon asks, and there’s the reluctance. Maybe he doesn’t want Martin to know what a monster he is. Tim can understand that, he supposes. It’s not as if he doesn’t tone down the person he’s been becoming when he’s around him.

“Do you know where Martin is today?” he counters, holds in a sigh.

“No.”

“He’s at my place. Couldn’t stand this morning. Turned out it had been going on most of the night, so he hasn’t slept. Night before, too. And he’s spending so much time tense that his muscles are aching, all the time. I wanted to stay with him, but. I had to come and see you.”

“He’s at your place?” Jon frowns, and Tim wants to snap at him, tell him that that’s not the part of it that he should be focussing on. Does his best to forget the nettle-sting of irritation, and move on.

“Yeah,” Tim says, and lets his refusal to give anything else show in his face. “He is.”

“And you haven’t told him you’re talking to me.”

“Why do you care all of a sudden what he knows?” Tim demands, and forces himself to close his mouth, breathe for a second, go on more calmly. He needs Jon as an ally, not on the other side of a shouting match. “I’ll tell him. I just thought I should come and make sure you were on board before I bothered him with it.”

“In that case,” Jon says, stands from his chair, and pushes it pointedly back under his desk. “We’ll both talk to him.”

“Fine,” Tim says. He gestures at the tape recorder, unwilling to move to to take it himself. “Bring that.”

-

Jon must remember before Tim does that the last time he was at Tim’s home, he was there to stalk him. He starts to drag his feet, won’t meet Tim’s eyes when he looks back for him, and his hands fuss awkwardly at each other in a tic that he must have learnt from Martin. They’re standing, Tim realises, at exactly the angle that the photos had been taken from.

Martin would have asked him if he was all right, and then they would have both fumbled their way through some awkward apology that would end with one of them, probably Jon, excusing himself to go and be morose elsewhere.

Tim offers him his biggest and most false smile, and lengthens his stride towards his door.

Jon catches up just as he unlocks it, and Tim makes an effort not to shoulder check him on the way in. He pauses, just inside, listens for the tell-tale noises of a bad spell. Ignores the feeling of Jon at his back, trying to move past him.

“Martin?” he calls.

There’s a flash of movement from across the flat as the bedroom door opens, and Martin peers around it, blinking in the light. It’s still dark in there, Tim realises, hopes it means that Martin’s just decided to catch up on all those stolen hours of sleep, and not that he hadn’t been able to move to get to the light switch.

“Tim,” he says, still bleary.

“How was it, today?” Tim asks. He leaves his position as sentinel, goes to meet him. Leans away when Martin steps out of the shadow of the door to kiss him.

“Fine,” Martin says, but the word’s as meaningless as ever. “Bit of pain around lunchtime, but only then. Maybe he had meetings?” 

“Hm,” Tim says. He takes a moment to enjoy the softness of Martin’s expression, wishes that he could get away without erasing it. “About him. I - I have another idea.”

Martin should sharpen. Should snap at him. He doesn’t. Just lets out a long sigh, and seems to lose with the breath something of what had been holding him up.

“Tim, we’ve talked about this. It’s best not to do anything. He’ll lose interest and then-”

“He’s not losing interest, though, is he?” Tim can’t keep his own voice low. He’s sure it gets louder each time they tread the familiar ground of this argument. “And you can’t go on like this. What if it happens when - what if it had happened during Prentiss? You can hardly move, let alone run.”

They’re good points, Tim feels, and he’s all set to go for the last one, the guilt trip, where he asks Martin if he’s considered that someone could get hurt trying to help him in a situation like Prentiss, the one’s been saving it for when he has an actionable plan that he needs Martin to agree to, but Martin isn’t listening. His eyes have found Jon, still lurking just inside the front door, like he doesn’t think he’s allowed.

“Jon?” he asks, taking a half-step back into the darkness of the bedroom, trying to hide.

“Martin,” Jon says, his attempt at a smile of greeting almost pained.

“Why-” Martin’s eyes flit between Jon and Tim as he steadies himself against the door frame. “Why are you here? Tim?”

“Jon is a part of my idea,” Tim says, and Martin’s glare finally settles on him, narrow-eyed.

“I said I didn’t want you involving yourself,” he says, and he’s too quiet. Tim wants him to shout, to shrill, to do everything that an angry Martin should. “I asked you not to do anything more. And now you’ve gone and involved Jon-”

“It’s not his fault,” Jon interjects. He moves further into the flat, finally, slowly, but doesn’t stop until he’s reached Tim. “I was concerned. About you. I asked him what was going on.”

“He shouldn’t have told-”

“ _Martin_ ,” Jon says, a desperation to it, a need to be understood without being explicit. “I _asked_ him.”

“Oh.” Martin’s eyes drop towards the carpet, all his rage gone, just like that. Tim wonders if he should be offended by that, by the way that Jon can take the blame for anything that would get Tim hours of argument, and be forgiven immediately. He isn’t. Too busy trying to breathe past the heavy reminder that their boss is a monster. “Please don’t compel him anymore? He doesn’t...”

“I didn’t mean to,” Jon says, softly. Clears his throat, forces himself on a little more loudly. “I think it’s a good plan. It’ll work, Martin.”

There’s a flash of something like hope in Martin’s face. He believes Jon, where he won’t Tim. And he has every reason not to, Tim tells himself, considering how he’d fucked up last time.

“I’m coming with you,” Martin says. It’s like Tim abruptly loses the ability to parse speech. He stares at him, waiting for an understanding that eludes him.

“No,” he manages, finally, when it becomes clear that Martin’s words aren’t going to resolve themselves into something that makes sense. “You’re staying here. He’s not getting to see you.”

“Tim, I’m not going to stay here and drink tea while you and Jon put yourselves as risk for me!” Martin snaps. He straightens up, breathing like the outburst was a marathon, staring at Tim, his hands fists.

“Martin…” Tim gestures vaguely at Jon, looking for support.

“It’s his decision,” Jon says, voice soft. He doesn’t meet Tim’s eyes.

“It’s a _bad_ decision,” Tim says, regrets with a feeling like a hive of biting ants in his digestive tract that he hadn’t explained more, about the situation, about how Stapleton had been towards Martin. “Martin, please?”

“Tim.” Martin folds his arms, glares him down, and Tim can feel that it’s as lost a battle as all those hours he had spent trying to convince Martin that Jon no longer deserved any of their sympathy.

“He’ll be fine,” Jon says, finally looks at Tim, only to offer him a smile that makes him feel no better at all.

“That’s settled, then,” Martin says, and slams the bedroom door before Tim can protest any further. Tim goes to move after him, but Jon’s hand comes to rest on his arm, just for long enough to stop him, before he jerks it back.

“Better he comes with us than tries to go on his own,” Jon says. “And besides. He is going to be fine. I’ve got an axe.”

“That is the least reassuring thing you have ever said,” Tim says, but he has more important things to do than squint at the look on Jon’s face and try to work out if that was supposed to be a joke. “You lied to him. Why did you lie?” 

“Oh.” Jon turns away from him, so all that Tim can see of his reaction is a shrug. “I… wasn’t comfortable being argued in front of. He’ll forgive me.”

-

Jon isn’t joking about the axe. It’s around forty centimetres long, a logo printed on the handle, and the blade is black and silver. It takes almost the entire journey for Tim to convince Jon and himself that it should probably stay in the bag, no matter how much Stapleton would be improved by being reduced to kindling.

He nearly goes back on it when Stapleton answers the door, smirks at Tim across the threshold.

“I thought I told you to go,” he says.

“You did,” Tim says, with as little inflection as he can manage. He can tell that Stapleton’s _thrilled_ he’s there. “I came back.”

“So you did,” Stapleton says. “But I’m afraid you’ve had a wasted journey. Unless you’ve brought your soul, we have nothing more to talk-”

Martin pushes Tim aside, stepping up to the door. He says nothing, doesn’t need to. Stapleton’s whole face lights up, his attention no longer anywhere near Tim.

“Martin,” he says, voice as hushed as though he’s in a church. “You’re looking well.” Martin doesn’t, the stress lines on his face too deeply ingrained, Stapleton must see that. “You had better come in.” He moves aside, but not so far that Martin doesn’t have to brush against him to go inside.

Tim shoulder checks him as hard as he can, and from the noises behind him, he thinks that Jon has, too. He doesn’t turn around to check, just strides straight to the door to the rest of Stapleton’s flat, and waits there, arms folded.

“Not that I don’t appreciate the visit,” Stapleton says, as he sweeps past them to make a start on the locks. “But why have you come? I thought I made things fairly clear. His soul belongs to me.”

“We have an offer for you,” Tim says, tightly.

“An offer?” Stapleton opens the door for them, and this time, Jon bulldozes him out of the way before Martin can move, leaving the way clear for them to file through.

The living room beyond is almost exactly as it had been before. The bulb has finally given up the ghost, and there are a few more souls on the shelves, but the mould doesn’t seem to have progressed. Tim moves, less than subtly, between Stapleton and the bedroom door and plants his feet, refuses to end up in a situation like the last one.

“We’ve written up some paperwork,” Tim says. “Stating that you freely give Martin’s soul back to him. Jon, would you mind?”

Jon shuffles over to the coffee table, and starts rummaging about in his bag. He places one of the copies down on the surface, and it immediately starts soaking up what looks like spilled coffee. Jon doesn’t seem to notice. He’s distracted, glancing around at the shelves, counting the souls.

“I… don’t, though?” Stapleton says, but he’s not paying attention either, watches Martin instead, who hunches his shoulders under the scrutiny and says nothing. “I don’t give it back.”

There’s a heavy clatter from the table, as Jon sets the tape recorder down next to the paperwork.

“In return,” Tim says, struggles not to let himself turn and look for the light that he knows must be spilling out from under the bedroom door. “We will _consider_ destroying the tape that Jon is about to record.” It’s not in the paperwork, but blackmail, Tim supposes, generally shouldn’t be.

“Record me all you like,” Stapleton says, light with laughter, as Jon presses the button to record, and it clunks into place. “I’m not going to return it. I am, however, _generously_ willing to accept yours, and to consider anything else that Martin feels like offering, in exchange for the assurance that I won’t touch it any longer.”

“No,” Tim says. “We’re going to be doing things this way.”

Stapleton’s eyes narrow at his confidence, flit to Jon as though he’s trying to fit Jon onto his idea of some sort of thug. The scars fit, maybe, and his expression, but none of the rest of it.

“How many?” Martin asks, suddenly, like he’s not been aware of any of the rest of it. He turns to look directly at Stapleton, and Tim wishes even more fervently that he’d been able to convince him to stay at home. “How many people have you done this to?”

“I run a business,” Stapleton says, and the condescending smile is almost fond.

“Jon?” Tim prompts, and there’s a growl leaking into his voice.

“Yes,” Jon says, and gestures for Stapleton to approach with a hand that’s all angles and burns.

“What are you hoping to achieve?” he asks, but he does as he’s told, moves towards the recorder like he’s amused to be humouring them.

“I’ll be asking the questions, from now on,” Jon informs him, and there’s not even any attempt at politeness. “Why don’t we start with, have you ever done anything illegal?”

Stapleton laughs. “Of course I have!” he says. “So have you, I bet. I streamed a whole season of NCIS last weekend, and I’ve been telling the iPlayer I have a tv license for _years_ -”

“Have you ever killed anyone?” Jon interrupts, impatience injected into every syllable. Tim wonders if he’s just going to start going down the list of crimes by severity.

“Once,” Stapleton says, and the smile drops so far off his face that Tim finds his gaining one. His eyes widen, fingers coming up to scrabble at his neck as though trying to remove his own vocal chords at their betrayal. “What?”

“Who were they?” Jon leans back like he’s trying to disengage from what he’s doing, be cool, be clinical, but it’s not quite working.

“First time I ate a soul, someone came after me,” Stapleton says, and his eyes seem to glaze over a little, like it’s some sort of statement-giving haze. Tim doesn’t like it, he decides. “I don’t remember who they were, really, not their name or their relation to the unsouled? But they were upset that I’d done that to someone they cared about. I caved their skull in with a frying pan. It was what I had to hand. Self defence. Or, it would have been, but the body ended up in bits under my floorboards. I think it must still be there. I moved away a long time ago, but I still check the local news in case they find it, and there’s never been anything.”

“What was the address?” Jon’s fingers twitch as though in want of a pen, but they’ve got the recorder, and nothing ever happens to the recorder, it seems to be more protected than they are.

“16 Reyston Avenue,” Stapleton says, coughs, struggling to resist the compulsion. It’s hopeless for him, Tim thinks, he doesn’t even understand what’s happening. “How are you-”

“I think we’ve got everything we need,” Jon says, with a customer-service smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Although, for the tape, what is your name?”

“Henry Stapleton,” Stapleton says, and this time his cough seems to get stuck in his throat. Tim hopes it chokes him.

Jon stabs at the pause button, just as Stapleton makes a grab for the recorder. Jon whisks it out of reach with ease, actually raps it against his knuckles, though he manages not to use the force that Tim would have.

“Sign the paperwork,” Jon advises him, thin-lipped and contemptuous. “It’ll give you something to do while Tim goes to fetch Martin’s soul.”

Stapleton’s head swings towards Tim, like he’s trying to calculate whether he’d be able to get past him. Tim throws a biro at him, and doesn’t quite manage to bounce it off his forehead. Stapleton snatches it off the coffee table with a snarl, and turns back to the papers.

“Wait.”

Martin. Tim’s insides drop away from him, and his brain goes too fast, goes blank. Of all the things that were going to go wrong with this plan, Martin wasn’t one of them, he didn’t have a contingency plan for Martin.

“There are forty-three souls in here,” Martin says, some sort of wretched emotion in his face that Tim can’t identify, can’t tell if it’s shock or anger or his own weird brand of indignation. “We can’t just leave them.”

Stapleton’s hand pauses over the document. He gazes up at Martin, a calculation in his face, and Tim can feel them losing, has a twenty-twenty view through into that future where they walk away from here without what they came for, and he and Jon are trying to keep Martin together for the train journey home.

“You can have them,” Stapleton says. “I keep yours, and the tape. I’ll draw you up a new contract for it. I’m sure you’ll find it fair.”

Tim feels the air shift. Jon leans forwards in his seat, and Tim knows what he’s going to do a second before he does it, can see the sharpening of his face, all the parts of him that he recognises from before Prentiss, from the tunnels, from the months of paranoia, sloughing away. Jon has a new shape now, and the last thing that he does before he moves into it completely, is shoot one last regretful glance at Martin.

“Henry Stapleton,” he says, smoothly. Doesn’t even set the recorder running again. It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s their monster now, not some distant thing on the other end of a long scrambled reel of magnetic tape. “How old are you?”

“Two-hundred and twelve,” Stapleton says, calm again, caught in the thrall of Beholding.

“How many souls have you eaten?” Jon asks, so still that Tim isn’t even sure he’s breathing, if his questioning even needs human things like air any longer.

“Thirty,” Stapleton says, his grip on the biro going slack. “I don’t remember their names.”

“Where you find people?”

“Anywhere where the desperate go. You get a sense for them, eventually. I don’t even need to see them cry anymore. I can just feel it.”

Tim takes a half-step towards Martin, but Martin’s watching Jon, something in his face like concern. _Yes_ , Tim thinks. _See him, see what he is_. But Martin doesn’t, Martin won’t, Martin can’t. And Jon’s clearly so afraid of him doing so, Tim wants to laugh, but his brain has lost those pathways.

“What do you dream about?” Jon’s settling into a rhythm now, no hesitations between the questions, no thought about what to ask next. He doesn’t need to think, just needs to keep asking, prove to Stapleton that he can never not answer, show him what it is to have his being torn open and examined.

“I don’t, not anymore.

“What did you want to be, when you were little?”

“An astronaut.”

“What is your darkest secret?”

“I don’t know, probably the murder? Not something I really think about.”

“Were your parents proud of you, do you think?”

“No.”

“And how does that make you feel?”

“It _hurts_!” Stapleton slams a hand down on the coffee table, a precarious stack of used mugs rattling, dangerously close to the edge. “I’ll sign it, I’ll sign it.”

“You _do that_ ,” Jon snarls, the sudden return of feeling to his face, to his voice, almost scalding. “And then, what you’re going to do, is return every soul you own to the person that you took it from, with no obligations. If you don’t, I will _know_.”

“Fine!” Stapleton snaps, but his voice is trembling too much for proper fear. His hand shakes through two copies of his signature. “Fine.”

“You’re never going to trick anyone else into an unsafe sale,” Jon dictates. “And, perhaps, I will _think about_ not turning over the tape to the authorities.”

“Do what you want,” Stapleton says. He stares at Jon with unbridled hatred, drops the biro onto the table, where it rolls a couple of centimetres, and stops. Tim considers going to fetch it, and then decides he doesn’t want it anymore. Stapleton can keep it, as a memento. “It’s done, it’s signed. Piss off. Get his soul and go.”

Tim only realises that he’s shaking when he’s standing in the bedroom, bathed in the glow of the soul. He swallows, tries to burn the image of Jon dissecting someone’s consciousness from his mind, replace it with the disaster who had wanted to help Martin, but it doesn’t work. Easier to just lose himself in trying to count the colours in Martin’s soul.

He snatches the coffee jar from the bedside table, and then holds it, still and safe. It’s too bright for him to tell whether the soul has moved against the glass, if it’s found the shape of his hand and tried to match it. It doesn’t matter, he decides.

 _Safe now_ , he wants to tell it, but the world’s too big for that.

When he gets back, Stapleton’s still staring at Jon, Martin forgotten. Jon pointedly ignores him in favour of tucking his recorder gently back into his bag.

“What _are_ you?” Stapleton whispers.

“If you don’t stay away from us,” Jon says, without looking, as he hoists his bag back onto his shoulder. “You’ll find out.”

He starts towards the door, dismissing Stapleton like he’s less than dog muck on the pavement, and Tim envies him the ability to insult people so deeply without even saying anything. Stapleton must resent it, scrambles to his feet.

“Freaks,” Stapleton hisses, eyes alight. “Monsters. That’s why you didn’t have souls to offer me, isn’t it? Things like you don’t have them. You want to threaten me with exposure? Fine, we’ll see how people like the sound of you. You’ll be in some government lab before the week is out, hope you enjoy vivisection.”

Tim opens his mouth, ready to come out with some knife-sharp retort that’ll get across to Stapleton that no one’s going to believe him, in the cruelest way possible, but Martin is faster. His fist cracks into Stapleton’s face so hard that it snaps it sideways, knocks him back into his chair, clutching at his cheekbone. Martin hisses, shakes his hand, clearly unused to the sensation.

Tim grabs a handful of jumper and tows him after Jon, before Stapleton refocus himself enough to say anything else. Martin doesn’t resist, but he doesn’t turn around until they’re out of the flat, out of Stapleton’s domain, either. Just trusts Tim not to put him anywhere that his feet won’t go.

Outside, Jon’s leaning against the wall, swaying slightly, his breathing harsh. Martin pulls towards him immediately, steadies him. Tim lets himself resent for a moment the feeling of being on the outside looking in, and then turns his back on it, occupies himself sliding the coffee jar into his own bag, unwilling to let it share space with Jon’s axe.

“Are you all right?” Martin asks, guiding Jon away from the wall, voice a mess of anxiety.

“Fine,” Jon says, flaps a hand as though he’s trying to wave Martin off. It doesn’t work. “Just, not done it that much yet?”

“Thank you,” Martin says. “You didn’t have to do that, didn’t have to-”

“It’s fine, Martin, really,” Jon says, hesitant.

 _Tell him you enjoy it_ , Tim thinks, sourly. It feels wrong, like he should be grateful, because Jon’s on their side, or, at the very least, on Martin’s side. _Tell him what you are._

“Monsters are harder,” Jon’s saying, but for all his insistence that it’s nothing, he’s still leaning on Martin to keep upright.

“We’ll get you home,” Martin tells him, and they’re doing that thing they do where they have two completely different conversations at each other.

“Might need to stop somewhere first,” Tim says, and forces himself to smile at Martin, when he shoots him a questioning look. It’s genuine, after a second, the relief at having actually won something flooding through him. “Need to get you some ice for that hand.”

-

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

Martin sighs at him. Tim deserves that, he supposes. He’s been asking that question for days, and every time, Martin’s answer has been the same. There’s no reason that it should be any different now, in Elias’ office, the light softening their edges.

“It’s only fair,” Martin says, and leans away from the pressure of Tim’s arm around his waist. He reaches down the jar with his name card, sets it down on Elias’ desk, and holds out a hand for the coffee jar. Tim gives it to him, swallows the pang in his chest at the letting go.

“Don’t know why you want it to be fair,” he mutters, but he takes the stopper out for him anyway. It’s Martin’s decision, no matter how many times Tim has suggested that it would be nice if one of them actually had their soul.

“We’ll get them back one day,” Martin assures him, but he still doesn’t look around, just tips the larger part of his soul into Elias’ jar, and stretches up to place it back on its shelf.

Tim hums, doubtful, and swipes the coffee jar back into his bag. They can ceremonially smash it later, he decides.

Martin hasn’t finished. He hesitates, his hand lingering against the shelf like a pianist’s over the keys, before the music starts, and then he’s deftly swapping his jar with Jon’s, so that it sits next to Tim’s.

“There,” Martin says. “That’s better. Where it’s supposed to be.”

“You’re a romantic, then,” Tim comments. He wants to turn away from the shelf, leave Elias’ office, go home with Martin and sleep wrapped up in one another for about a month. Instead he stands and watches, as the two souls shift in their patterns, press up against the glass between them like iron filings to a magnet.

“Tim, we’ve been dating for _months_ ,” Martin points out. “I think that’s been clear before now.”

“Maybe so,” Tim says, and he wants to suggest that maybe Martin’s not the only one. He turns Martin away from the shelf, so that he’s a silhouette in the gentle light and pulls him down into a kiss. It’s not much, Elias’ office is the wrong place for that, but it’s enough.

“We should go,” Martin says, but the words are mumbled against Tim’s lips, their foreheads resting together, and Tim doubts there’s much resolve in it. “Before he gets back.”

“You think he’ll care?” Tim’s half-sure that Elias had allowed them their particular mission on purpose, wandered down to the Archives even after Jon’s vague and poorly thought out excuse for a meeting. The door had been unlocked and everything, even though Tim had spent hours watching lockpicking tutorials on youtube specially.

“He likes to have things in the right order,” Martin says. “If he notices-”

“He’s going to notice, Martin, your soul is _literally beautiful_.”

“It is?” Martin jerks his head around, staring back at the shelf, and Tim regrets it, wants to drag him back. “I wouldn’t have said so? Yours, though, it’s got all these colours in it...”

Tim huffs out a breath, glances past Martin towards his own plain blue-white soul, a little brighter than normal, but still completely devoid of the spectrum that he can see in Martin’s. For a moment, there’s a wild, fairytale part of him that wants to ask if Martin still believes in soulmates.

“It really doesn-” Tim cuts himself off, his phone in his pocket buzzing through it. Jon, probably, warning them that Elias is on his way back up. “I love you, you know?”

“Yes?” Martin blinks at him, confused. “I did? You said? Well, you didn’t _say_ , but you _said_ , lots of times, lots of way-”

“Just, say you love me too.” Tim smiles at him, and this time, there’s nothing forced in it. “That’s how it usually goes.”

“Oh! Yes! I do. Love you. Too.”

“Right. Just as well.” Tim ignores the look on Martin’s face, the one that says he’s going to dissolve into laughter at Tim’s expense any second, and settles for dragging him out of Elias’ office. They leave their souls sitting beside one another on their shelf, where they’ll stay until the day they can leave the Institute.

Elias never moves them back.


End file.
